He covered the death of Osama bin Laden as their first reporter in country to the story, entering the fugitive's former compound and breaking the news that cellphone signals had led the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the al-Qaeda leader.

[4] Paton Walsh reported from Dagestan on the family of the alleged Boston Bombers, and from Turkey during weeks of unrest over the planned demolition of Gezi Park.

[citation needed] While based in London, Paton Walsh uncovered a series of exclusives for the programme, including the British use of incendiary bombs in Afghanistan; a covert British programme to train the special forces of regimes considered to have questionable human rights records; and Sebastian Coe's controversial description of the Chinese policemen who guided the Olympic torch through London as "thugs".

[8] The product of six months of negotiations by Paton Walsh, the interview took place in his remand centre and at the courthouse, where he was facing extradition to the United States.

Bout professed his innocence, but also admitted his planes could have run weapons without his knowledge; that he ran guns for the Afghan government in the 1990s; and said he was close personal friends with Jean Pierre Bemba, an alleged warlord on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

[9] Along with his colleagues in a Channel Four News team in Sri Lanka during April 2009, Paton Walsh was deported for their reporting on allegations from the United Nations about sexual abuse in camps of those internally displaced there.

[10] The other members of the team, including producers Nevine Mabro and Bessie Du, along with cameraman Matt Jasper, had been one of a handful to report the end of the 25-year war when the military closed in on a tiny strip of land, filled with civilians, in the country's north east, called the No Fire Zone.

Perhaps presciently, McCrystal told Walsh, when referring to President Hamid Karzai's recent outbursts, "war is high stress stuff" that often causes people to say rash things.

His team broadcast the first mobile phone footage of a woman being flogged publicly by the Taliban in the Swat Valley, which caused popular outcry in Pakistan.

[18] Paton Walsh has also worked on vigilante murders and economic booms in China; on mud volcanoes in Indonesia; migrant workers in Dubai; food exportation from Cambodia; Naxalite rebels in Chhattisgarh, India; and he watched and reported as his office and flat were surrounded by the protests that shook Bangkok in May 2010.

[23] Paton Walsh joined The Observer newspaper in 1999, after studying English at University College London, where he has run the Guardian's "Me and My Motor" column, in which celebrities spoke each week about their car.

[24] Paton Walsh began at the Observer as a researcher on the travel and film sections, before winning the Young Journalist of the Year award from the British Press Gazette.